The Weekend Report

The much-ballyhooed debut of Divergent handily led weekend moviegoing with an estimated $56.2 million. That left newcomer Muppets Most Wanted with poor seconds of $16.5 million. But the session curve ball belonged to the inspirational God’s Not Dead that played largely heartland multiplexes and grossed a significant $8.7 million.

Results for new niche and exclusive title were largely moribund-to-fair. The controversial Nymphomaniac: Volume 1 (Volume 2 opened in Canada) did little to overcome American unease with graphic sexual material with a box office of $157,000 at 24 venues. The true life chronicle of the film that never was – Jodorowsky’s Dune – was off to a good start of $35,800 from three screens.

Overall revenues for the sessions climbed to more than $140 million and an upward bump of 25%. It was a more modest 2% improvement from 2013 when freshmen entries The Croods and Olympus Has Fallen led the charge with respective bows of $43.6 million and $30.4 million.

Divergent, based on a trilogy of young fiction books aimed at female readers, with its depiction of a dystopian future was naturally viewed as a potent successor to The Hunger Games. And while it doesn’t appear to be nearly as commercially vibrant, it opened with sufficient force to buttress the decision to commit to a three-picture investment.

The film got off to a quick start with Thursday late night shows that grossed roughly $4.9 million. But its Friday to Saturday bump was just a modest 11%. Unsurprisingly the opening audience skewed 59% female with a 50/50 split at the over/under 25-year threshold.

Reinventing, or at least revitalizing the Muppets multi-generational appeal has been a daunting challenge. Muppets Most Wanted came short of that task as it fell short of tracking that anticipated an opening better than $20 million. Exit polling revealed its strongest appeal with younger viewers and families with under 25-year olds accounting for 54% of opening weekend audiences with 71% identifying as families. It tilted slightly female with 54% of the crowd.

Identifying the appeal of faith-based movies has largely been abysmal as the majors very rarely dip into that niche. So pundits largely dismissed the prospects of God’s Not Dead with grim predictions that ranged from a low of $2.5 million to dubious top end of $5 million. Admittedly its labor intensive to divine which pictures have support from the pulpit and special church projections and this latest outing must have had both to generate its box office response.

CinemaCon, the annual convention of film exhibition, gets underway tomorrow in Las Vegas and while by its nature it’s unlikely to grapple substantively with the issues that sustain an uneasy relationship between those who play and those who supply movies, these are transitional times. A new generation of viewers is watching film on platforms other than traditional theatrical outlets. The majors are anxious to capitalize on this fact with new patterns of availability for ancillary revenue streams as theater owners dig in to prevent erosion of the theatrical window that’s its bread and butter. One can expect there will be a lot of data and details tossed around to support the pro and con sides of the argument.

So it’s appropriate to invoke the words of Benjamin Disraeli: “the three things I hate most are lies, damn lies and statistics.”